The “wealthiest 10%” of people on the planet are “responsible” for 65% of the 0.61C increase in global average temperatures over 1990-2020, according to new research.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, uses a field of climate science called “attribution” to determine the contribution of the world’s “wealthiest population groups” to climate change through the greenhouse gases they emit.
The authors also calculate the contribution of these high-income groups to the increasing frequency of heatwaves and droughts.
For example, the study finds the wealthiest 10% of people – defined as those who earn at least €42,980 (£36,605) per year – contributed seven times more to the rise in monthly heat extremes around the world than the global average.
In another finding, the Amazon rainforest faced a threefold increase in the likelihood of droughts over the period studied, most of which was driven by the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population.
The authors also explore country-level emissions, finding that from the wealthiest 10% in the US produced the emissions that caused a doubling in heat extremes across “vulnerable regions” globally.
One scientist not involved in the study tells Carbon Brief that efforts to attribute global warming to individual income groups is an “important step towards targeted policies” and could support climate litigation.
Emissions inequality
Humans emit more than 40bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Developed countries are responsible for the majority of global emissions, as a result of the typically more carbon-intensive lifestyles of their residents.
Meanwhile, the most severe impacts of climate change are disproportionately felt by the poorest and most vulnerable people.
The new study uses an income and wealth inequality dataset from the World Inequality Database to track inequality over 1990-2019, showing how much the world’s wealthiest 10%, 1% and 0.1% of society have contributed to warming over 1990-2020. (For details on the method, see the modelling inequalities section below.)
The world’s wealthiest 10% all earn more than €42,980 (£36,605) per year, according to the database. Meanwhile, the world’s wealthiest 0.1% earn more than €537,770 (£458,011) per year.
Of the 0.61C increase in global average temperatures over 1990-2020, the authors estimate that 65% was due to the emissions of the wealthiest 10% of people on the planet. For the wealthiest 0.1%, the estimate is 8%.
The graph below shows how much global temperatures would have risen over 1990-2020 if everyone in the world emitted as much as the world’s poorest 50% (purple), middle 40% (green), richest 10% (orange), richest 1% (blue) and richest 0.1% (pink) people. The grey bar shows how much global temperatures actually rose.
How global temperatures would have risen if everyone in the world emitted the world produced the same amount of emissions, on average, as individuals in the bottom 50% (purple), middle 40% (green), top 10% (orange), top 1% (blue) and top 0.1% (pink) of the world’s emitters. Source: Schöngart et al (2025).
The authors find that if the whole world had emitted as much as the wealthiest 10% of people over 1990-2020, global average temperatures would have risen by 2.9C, instead of 0.61C. If the global population had emissions as large as the wealthiest 0.1%, temperatures would have risen by 12.2C.
Meanwhile, the study calculates that if the whole world had emissions as low as the poorest 50%, global temperatures would have remained close to 1990 levels.
Hot and dry extremes
As greenhouse gas emissions cause the climate to warm, extreme weather events such as heatwaves and droughts are becoming more intense, frequent and long-lasting.
The authors use attribution – a field of climate science that aims to identify the “fingerprint” of global warming on these events – to determine the contribution of the emissions of the world’s wealthiest people to the increasing frequency of heatwaves and droughts.
The authors assess “extremely hot” and “extremely dry” months, defined as the most extreme 1% of months in a pre-industrial climate during the hottest month of the year regionally. (In a pre-industrial climate, only one of each extreme would be expected every 100 years on average.)
The graphs below show the number of additional heatwaves (left) and droughts (right) that have occurred since 1990 due to climate change in different regions of the world.
The full bar shows the total number of additional heatwaves due to human-cased climate change in each region. The green bar shows additional occurrences due to the wealthiest 1%. The green and orange bars combined show the wealthiest 10%.
The numbers in green and orange show how much the wealthiest 1% and 10% of the planet contributed to the extreme, compared to the global average. (For example, an orange number of 7.0 means that the wealthiest 10% of people contributed seven times more to the extreme event than the global average.)
The study finds that an average of 11.5 additional heat events observed in August – the month where the rise in heat extremes is, on average, most pronounced – are attributable to the wealthiest 10%.
It also calculates that emissions from this group resulted in, on average, an additional 2.3 droughts in the Amazon in October – the month with the strongest attributable drying trend in the region.
Highest emitters
The authors also assess the contributions of the wealthiest people to climate extremes on a country level, identifying the US, the EU, China and India as the world’s four highest emitting regions.
The graphic below shows the increase in frequency of one-in-100 year peak summer heat extremes in selected regions attributable to the wealthiest 10% of people (left) and 1% of people (right) in China (red), the US (pink), the EU (peach) and India (blue).
Emissions from the wealthiest 10% in the US resulted in an average of 1.3 extra heat events globally, the authors find. However, this increase is distributed unevenly across the globe.
For example, the authors find this income group was responsible for the emissions that contributed to 2.7 additional heat events in “heat-affected areas” such as the Amazon and south-east Africa.
Emissions from the wealthiest 10% of people in the EU resulted in an additional 1.5 heatwaves in both the Amazon and south-east Africa.
Meanwhile, the Amazon faces 2.1 more heat extremes in 2020 than in 1990 due to the emissions of the richest 1% in the US, China, EU and India.
While inequalities between one country or region and another are well documented, it should also be noted that “inequalities within developing countries are increasing”, Dr Carl Schleussner, study author and leader of the integrated climate impacts research group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), tells Carbon Brief.
For example, he notes that the paper shows “very high levels” of emissions from “the Chinese middle and upper classes”.
However, he says that many existing global frameworks to address climate change “treat countries as a whole” and fail to “differentiate” between income groups within countries.
Schleussner argues that the study highlights the need for “progressive policies” for climate action, which involve “tackling particularly high emitters” in all countries.
Dr Sarah Schöngart, a researcher at ETH Zurich and lead author of the study, tells Carbon Brief that studies such as this could provide important evidence in loss and damage litigation.
Prof Jakob Zscheischler, an Earth system scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research who was not involved in the study, also highlights the ways the findings could be used in climate-change lawsuits. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Quantifying the contribution of individual income groups to global warming and changes in climate extremes is an important step towards targeted policies and further supports climate litigation. Supporting climate injustice with concrete numbers will hopefully help the most vulnerable and least responsible strengthen their case.”
Modelling inequalities
The study uses a range of methods to attribute changes in heat and drought to the emissions of particular wealth groups. To model global greenhouse gas emissions by wealth group, the paper uses a “wealth-based carbon inequality assessment” from a 2022 study.
(See Carbon Brief’s coverage of the 2022 study.)
The study uses income and wealth inequality dataset from the World Inequality Database to track inequality over 1990-2019. It combines economic data with information on per-capita carbon footprints – calculated using “input-output” methodologies combined with data from the “distributional national accounts” project.”
The model considers three factors. The first is private consumption – made up of emissions from the direct use of fossil fuels and emissions embedded into goods and services. The second includes emissions from government spending in that person’s country – such as government administration, public roads or defence. The final component of a person’s carbon footprint is from their investments.
The authors then created a series of “counterfactual” emissions pathways, which imagine the world without the emissions of the wealthiest 10%, 1% and 0.1% of society, respectively. The emissions pathways include CO2, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, expressed as CO2-equivalent.
Lead author Schöngart tells Carbon Brief that including methane in the models is important, because it has “really high potency and near-term warming”. However, she notes that the team needed to make some assumptions about methane emissions – for example, assuming that each income group emits the same relative amount of methane compared to other greenhouse gas emissions.
Using a “simple” climate model called MAGICC, the authors model global average temperatures under these counterfactual emissions pathways. This allows them to calculate how much the planet would have warmed over 1990-2020 without the emissions of the 10%, 1% and 0.1% of society, respectively.
The authors use the global average temperature trends to produce temperature and rainfall data for every land-based grid square on Earth via a climate model emulator called MESMER.
Schöngart tells Carbon Brief that an emulator is “an approximation of an Earth system model” which “allows us to generate incredible amounts of data”, while using less computing power and taking less time to run.
The study authors then use attribution methods to identify how the emissions from the world’s wealthiest members of society have affected the frequency of heatwaves and droughts, by comparing the world as it is to a “counterfactual” world without human-caused climate change.
The graphic below shows these steps.
Earth system scientist Zscheischler praises the methods in the study. He tells Carbon Brief that “the main innovation of work lies in its novel combination of relatively simple emulators that capture the most important relationships between emissions and global warming and changes in extremes”.
He adds that emulators have been evaluated in other studies and are “trustworthy for this type of delicate analysis”.
Prof Wim Thiery – an associate professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, who was not involved in the study – also commends the use of emulators. He tells Carbon Brief that “producing the information presented in this study with a suite of full-blown Earth system models is impossible from a computational cost and human effort perspective”.
The post Two-thirds of global warming since 1990 caused by world’s ‘wealthiest 10%’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Two-thirds of global warming since 1990 caused by world’s ‘wealthiest 10%’
Kicking off proceedings at the mid-year climate talks in Bonn amid fraught global geopolitics, UN climate chief Simon Stiell told delegates that tackling the global climate crisis is “the hardest, but most important, thing humanity has ever tried to do together”.
Perhaps hoping to forestall the usual diplomatic wrangling that routinely bogs down the talks, he warned governments that there is no time to “re-open past debates or renegotiate commitments already made”.
Instead, he added, there is an imperative to accelerate real-world action as deadly heat intensifies and the fossil-fuel cost crisis sparked by the Iran war strangles economies, “taking a wrecking ball to lives and prosperity”.
That message seemed to sink in with the negotiators in Bonn, where the opening session kicked off only an hour late and was not marred by agenda rows, which delayed the start of the talks by a day last year.
On bridging the gap between the negotiations and the real economy, Stiell called for elevating the Global Climate Action Agenda, a goal long promised but never fully delivered.
But, he added, Türkiye – working with Australia – is now building on the efforts by last year’s COP30 presidency to streamline this process into six thematic areas, including boosting energy and food security, curbing methane and strengthening the resilience of cities.
Stiell was also keen to stress that the formal negotiations remain central to driving implementation of the Paris Agreement. He urged governments in Bonn to advance key issues including the Global Goal on Adaptation, the delivery of the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake and the development of a new just transition mechanism.
The first Global Stocktake was an assessment of countries’ collective progress in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, which led to a 2023 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and a 2030 goal to triple renewable energy, among other things.
Hinting at upcoming reforms to the UN climate regime – which has often been accused of failing to keep pace with advancements in the real world – Stiell said all institutions must continuously evolve and improve. The UN climate secretariat has heard countries’ calls to work more efficiently, support access to climate finance and reduce the reporting burden on governments, he added.
Türkiye to outline targets for Action Agenda
While Australia will run the negotiations at COP31, for co-host Türkiye – which is organising the talks in Antalya – the focus is on the so-called Global Climate Action Agenda. This is a sprawling smorgasbord of around 500 voluntary initiatives bringing together governments, businesses, investors, cities and civil society. It covers everything from strengthening power grids for clean energy, to restoring degraded forests and land, and reducing emissions from buildings.
COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum told the opening session of the Bonn talks his team will present the “main framework” of the Action Agenda on Tuesday, adding it will be “based on concrete and tangible targets”. He also said Türkiye will announce a roadmap for translating what happens in the negotiations into the real world, which will ”point to a science-based process with highly clear and defined outcomes” and steps for getting there.
“In the second decade of the Paris Agreement, the COP31 Action Agenda will bring the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake to life, and we will make a strong start to the second decade,” Kurum said.
In a joint letter issued in May, the two host nations said COP31 will be shaped as an “Implementation COP” and a “COP of the Future,” aimed at translating commitments into tangible and trackable progress. They outlined priority areas – to be achieved through the six axes of the Action Agenda defined ahead of COP30 – including electrification, zero waste, resilient cities, sustainable agriculture, green industrial transformation and climate finance.
Chiming with this, Australia’s Chris Bowen, the COP31 president of negotiations, made the global energy transition the centerpiece of his opening intervention in Bonn.
This year’s climate summit, he said, must send investors and corporations the message that countries are “collectively committed” to building up renewable energy and reducing fossil fuel reliance. Fossil fuels were not directly mentioned in the main outcome at COP30 last year after countries failed to agree on developing a global transition roadmap, which Brazil is now putting together outside of formal negotiations.
Bowen, Australia’s minister of climate change and energy, said that, while energy crises like the one the world is going through now will become more frequent and more unpredictable, accelerating the shift to cleaner sources will “ease shocks to our energy systems”.
He identified progress on electrification as a priority for COP31, pointing to an assessment by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that electricity’s share of final energy consumption needs to reach 35% by 2035 to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in sight.
“In a world of geopolitical uncertainty and energy disruption, the transition is not a risk,” Bowen added, “it is the solution and an immense opportunity”.
Tensions around trade and climate surface again
Over the weekend, it became clear that discussions on trade and climate would once again become a source of contention between countries – if not as explosively as they did at the start of the talks a year ago.
As agreed in the COP30 Global Mutirão decision, a series of dialogues on trade and climate will be held in Bonn yearly from 2026 to 2028. Climate Home News understands that the G77 + China has expressed discontent about the organisation of the first dialogue that will take place on June 13, because it plans to incorporate contributions from a range of organisations rather than just governments.
In a statement at the opening plenary, Uruguay, on behalf of the G77 group of developing nations, “encouraged Parties [countries] to engage constructively in the dialogue in a robust and structured manner”. Many in the Global South are concerned that international trade measures to make products greener, such as the European Union’s carbon levy on imports, could end up discriminating against them.
Russia warned during its opening statement that the new dialogue should not be used to create trade barriers.
Comment: Indonesia’s failing Just Energy Transition Partnership is a cautionary tale
Avantika Goswami, climate change and green economy programme manager at the India-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home News that the UN climate secretariat has been unclear and untransparent about what will be discussed at the dialogue. “We don’t know if observers and civil society are going to be able to contribute,” she added.
After the three mid-year dialogues, in 2028 there will be a high-level event for countries to exchange their views and experiences, and the officials in charge will have to present a report summarising these discussions.
At Monday’s opening session, Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the Ghanian chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said it would be “important to provide clarity on how they intend to present the report” and suggested that the co-chairs of the Bonn talks should consult with countries on how best to do that.
The post Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says appeared first on Climate Home News.
Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says
Climate Change
Bowen urged to lead with vision and ambition to accelerate fossil fuel phase out at Bonn climate meeting, as global energy crisis bites
Bonn, Germany, Monday 8 June 2026 — As the UN climate negotiations in Bonn commence, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to lead with vision and ambition to advance multilateral climate cooperation, and use his unique position to drive concrete progress at COP31 and ensure a meaningful partnership with the Pacific.
In the context of a global energy crisis and turbulent geopolitics, the Bonn Climate Change Conference will be a critical moment to sustain emerging political momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels. The midway point on the road to COP31 in Türkiye in November, Bonn will be the first time Minister Bowen has attended a major UN conference in his role as COP31 President of Negotiations.
The start of the Bonn meetings also marks 100 days since the illegal US-Israel war on Iran sparked a global energy shock and after 57 countries including Australia met in Santa Marta, Colombia in April for the world’s first conference on the transition away from fossil fuels — a landmark moment signalling political winds of change in the face of threats to multilateralism.
Speaking from Bonn, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Amidst a global energy crisis, accelerating climate disasters and a looming super El Niño, the urgency to accelerate climate action and break free from fossil fuel dependence has never been clearer.
“Minister Bowen has been telling Australia and the world that we are in a global ‘fossil fuel crisis’, and that unhooking from fossil fuels is fundamental both to tackling the climate crisis and to ensuring secure and affordable energy. It’s time to match that message with a clear vision and agenda for COP31 — one that has the transition away from fossil fuels at its heart.
“As COP31 President of Negotiations, Australia has both the opportunity and responsibility to build on the momentum of COP30 in Belém and the recent landmark conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels. This includes leading by example at home, with an immediate halt to new fossil fuel projects — including the mammoth proposed Browse gas project — and committing to develop a national roadmap away from fossil fuel production.”
“Few countries have as much skin the game as Australia: we are a country highly vulnerable to extreme heat, fires, floods and other impacts of climate change, we are suffering the consequences of fossil fuel dependency in terms of our energy security and affordability, but we have some of the world’s best renewable energy opportunities.
“Bonn is a key moment for the incoming Presidency to start shaping the vision, building the necessary trust, and actively setting priorities and expectations for the COP. We therefore hope and expect our Minister to be much more vocal and active in Bonn.
“Australia, in partnership with the Pacific, is taking the reins of global climate cooperation at a critical moment in the world’s transition away from fossil fuels. There is no more time to lose.”
Also in Bonn, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Multilateral cooperation is the antidote to climate and geopolitical chaos. At Bonn, Pacific nations’ legacy of leadership from the frontlines of the climate crisis can be our guiding star as we build a more peaceful and secure world for all.
“We must build on the progress at Santa Marta and break the hold fossil fuels have on our global security and economies. Pacific nations are already facing the brunt of a global climate crisis, but now facing the compounding injustice of an energy crisis brought on by fossil fuel dependence. We did not create either of these crises, but are among the most exposed to both.
“The International Court of Justice made clear that responsibility to address the climate crisis extends beyond borders and that continuing to expand fossil fuel production, including for export, could constitute an internationally wrongful act — a ruling that has now been overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Continuing down the fossil fuel path, and failing to align efforts with limiting warming to 1.5C, is a breach of our international legal obligations.
“We must not lose sight of what’s needed — by elevating the voices of Pacific leaders, backing Pacific-led solutions, and maximising the opportunity of the Pacific pre-COP, we can ensure the 1.5°C imperative and the transition away from fossil fuels are central to the agenda at COP31, and that communities are granted the finance they need to build a strong, resilient future beyond fossil fuels.”
Ahead of SB64, Greenpeace International has produced a policy briefing outlining the core elements of a just transition away from fossil fuels and the urgent, priority actions needed from national governments and through global co-operation to make it a reality.[1]
ENDS
[1] A Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Policy Briefing
Photos in the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal) or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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